As computer technology has advanced, the role of computers in our daily lives has expanded, as has the need for various peripheral or supporting devices. One typical peripheral device used with computers is a printer, which generates hard copies of electronic data. The types and capabilities of available printers have similarly been expanding, resulting in a wide variety of printers with a range of printing capabilities, performance, and price.
One significant expansion in the use of computer technology is the networking of computers. Networking computers together allows the computers to communicate with one another as well as with other devices, such as printers. As computer networks, such as the Internet, continue to develop, there is increasing demand for additional and improved functionalities that draw upon and exploit the full computing potential of computer networks.
With the availability of computer networks, these networks can now be used for printing. For instance, users may be able to access the facilities of remote printing services via a network such as the Internet. Such an arrangement can, however, create unexpected results. For example, the user may not be aware of the capabilities of the printing device that will be used to print the document or documents. In such a case, it is possible that the color gamut of the printing device used to print the documents will not include one or more specific colors (e.g., Pantones™) contained in the document. Therefore, the user may be unsatisfied with the printing result. Clearly, this can be a significant problem, especially where a large number of documents are to be printed and the colors in the documents are important (e.g., in the case of a company logo).